A few handy Firefox tricks

For years, I have preferred to use Firefox as my default web browser (if you haven’t tried it, check it out here. It is reliable, and very customizable. Internet Explorer has made a lot of improvements with version 8, but I still use Firefox most of the time.

If you use Firefox, today I’m going to show you a few shortcuts that will make your life a lot easier.

Shortcut #1: Open a link in a new tab

You probably already know that if you want to open a link in a new tab, you can right-click and choose “Open in new tab”. That means you can keep reading the page you are on, and that new page is downloading in the new tab at the same time.

What you might not know is that instead of right-clicking, you can just middle-click on the link. This means pushing down on the scroller wheel on your mouse (without scrolling). Cool, huh? There’s more, keep reading!

Shortcut #2: A quicker Back button

One of the most common clicks made by anyone is the Back button, to get to the previous page. Instead of moving your mouse up to the top left corner of the screen and clicking on the Back button, just hold down Shift and scroll down (toward yourself) with the mouse wheel. To go Forward, hold Shift and scroll up (away from you).

Shortcut #3: Make the text on a site bigger or smaller

This one is great. You might be on a site and the text is just too small (and as I get older, I’m finding a lot of sites have text too small to read :). The easy way to fix that is to hold down the Ctrl key, and scroll the mouse wheel down. To make the text smaller again, hold Ctrl and scroll up.

Shortcut #4: Give your browser the full screen

This trick is probably my favorite – I just wish I could remember to use it more often! When you are on a website and your monitor just doesn’t seem to have enough room to show everything, go ahead and tap the F11 button and watch the magic unfold before your very eyes! To get back to the previous “regular” screen, hit F11 again.

You may be interested in these other posts

Quicker back button- Just press the backspace key
I don’t know why there is no one key button to go forward
Rich

Shortcut #2: A quicker Back button

One of the most common clicks made by anyone is the Back button, to get to the previous page. Instead of moving your mouse up to the top left corner of the screen and clicking on the Back button, just hold down Shift and scroll down (toward yourself) with the mouse wheel. To go Forward, hold Shift and scroll up (away from you).

Sharon
March 7th, 2011

What if you have a trackball mouse? These don’t work with that. Any hints for that?

Ray
March 8th, 2011

re: Quicker back button – I always use the backspace on the keyboard, just easy for me to hit and quite convenient.

Never knew about depressing the wheel – just tried it – have to make sure you are over the link or you get the page scrolling action.

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